Words

As I sit simultaneously waiting for the California Supreme Court to announce its ruling on the Proposition 8 challenge and mulling the Sotomayor nomination, I keep coming back to two sets of words President Obama has let slip, only to have conservatives pounce on them and fling them back at us with monkey-poo abandon.

God is in the mix.

Carrie Prejean likes that one. So does everyone who opposes marriage equality on religious grounds. They are only too happy to remind us that our President, the one we threw our support to, is nominally on their side in this one.

Empathy.

The alleged Democratic majority should make Sotomayor's confirmation a done deal, at least on paper, at least until the Blue Dogs decide it's more important to roll over for Republicans than to advance any actual Democratic interests, and meanwhile John Boehner has already been bleating for a week that he will filibuster any nominee who intends to decide cases based on emotions and gut reactions and empathy rather than the law. Because of course that's how all the people Obama considered for the spot built their careers, on touchy-feelyness rather than legal knowledge. But none of the real legal-world qualifications matter any more, because now the opposition has the E-word to pour into the troughs for the base to snarf up and spit back over and over and over.

In a world where the sound bite has replaced reasoned discourse, and regurgitation critical thought, words are extremely precious and delicate commodities. Either the other side needs to give up their indiscriminate plucking and recoding, or our side needs to exercise a little more caution. Both propositions speak to the suck factor of our situation.